


The Second Life of James Norrington

by BigFootGirl



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29669697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigFootGirl/pseuds/BigFootGirl
Summary: He thought it would all end in battle. Someone has had other ideas.
Kudos: 2





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the events of "At World's End."

James Norrington was not afraid of death. He hadn’t been afraid for many years, and so his refusal to become a slave to the Flying Dutchman was not just one of spite, but also of truth.

And then he died.

And then he opened his eyes and saw the familiar face of one Will Turner.

“Turner?” He looked around as he slowly stood on the deck of the familiar-but-unfamiliar ship.

“Easy now, Norrington.”

The former commodore of His Majesty’s Royal Navy and one-time pirate (he would sooner forget his time serving Cutler Beckett) accepted the other man’s proffered hand to help stabilize him.

“Where am I? What is this ship?”

“She’s fhe Flying Dutchman,” came the response.

Norrington looked at Will in shock.

“No.”

“No?”

“I told him that I wasn’t afraid of death. How can I be here? And what has happened to her?” he finally asked as he stared around at the ship, her rigging, and her (now de-sea-creature-ified) crew.

“She knows. And she says that you’ve got unfinished business.”

“She who?”

“The Dutchman.”

“The Dutch-“

“She’s a living force. And she says that you can’t go down to the Locker until you’ve finished what you’re meant to finish.”

Norrington looked at him in shock, mouth agape.

“What am I meant to finish?”

“That’s up to you to figure out. I can let you on my crew until we come near-enough to shore for you to be rowed over.”

“And how did you come to be in command of the Dutchman?” Norrington asked after he had partially wrapped his head around all that the former blacksmith had explained.

“I’ll tell you over some rum.”

“…Fine.”

The two men walked into the captain’s domain as the Flying Dutchman sailed into the horizon.


	2. An Introduction to a New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Norrington's journey in this strange afterlife is only beginning.

“So you’re married then,” Norrington said indicating the ring that Will wore on a chain around his neck.

“Aye. During the battle. Barbossa officiated.”

Norrington chuckled into his cup.

“Elizabeth said you chose a side.”

He put the cup down and immediately sobered up.

“Yes. I chose the Pirate King. As you did as well.”

“Aye.”

The two went back to silent drinking for several minutes until another man, older than them both but with a familiarity that dogged Norrington’s thoughts, came in.

“Sorry to disturb, Captain, but we’re approaching the wreck.”

Will took another sip before saying simply, “I know.” He finished his cup, stood, and made his way back onto the deck.

Norrington looked the man over again.

“Have we met?”

“I stabbed you.”

“Oh.”

“Bill Turner. Most call me Bootstrap.”

“Turner?”

“Will’s father.”

“I see.”

“Shall we?” Bootstrap gestured to the door.

Norrington finished his rum and followed the older man back onto the deck.

* * *

The scene as the ship came upon the wreck was something else.

Norrington’s trained eye cast out upon the damaged vessel, boards floating in the calm sea while bodies lay both atop the wreck and floating in the water.

The crew of the Dutchman lay their hats to their hearts, each saying a prayer or offering a moment of silence to the dead and the dying before they went about their appointed duties.

The largest members of the Dutchman’s crew, Messrs. Adebayo and Griffin, went down to the water in the ship’s dinghy with Will. Norrington could not hear what was said on the water, but he understood that it was both the same and different from what Davy Jones had offered Norrington not so long ago.

In the end only a boy, not more than 16, was brought back up with the three men while all the others were left to sink down to the Locker.

“What’s your name?” Will asked once they had secured the boat to the ship’s side and the boy had been carried onto the deck of the ship, gently deposited by Mr. Adebayo on some sail.

“Ben Mercer,” came the reply.

“Ben Mercer. You may stay on as crew for as long as you are able once a year has passed. One day we will come to a port and you will leave our company hale and hearty. Until then I urge you to sleep. Mr. Adebayo, please help him to a bunk. We’ll give him a hammock to berth when he is well.”

Mr. Adebayo did as he was told as another of the crew, a short man with what looked to be a long beard that was tied up under his chin, approached the captain. After a short conversation, Will turned to Norrington.

“Can you look after him as a favor to me? The boy?”

Norrington nodded and followed Mr. Adebayo and the boy to the crew quarters.

He and Ben Mercer would soon find that time was very different on the Dutchman.


	3. Different Times, Different Places

The next wreck that the Flying Dutchman and her crew encountered was a French merchant vessel, newly departed from the colony of Saint-Domingue. Two of the ship’s survivors, the cook and the surgeon, had agreed to Will’s term of a year to start.

While talking to the cook, as he went to fetch sustenance that the Dutchman’s crew did not actually need but endeavored to enjoy at regular intervals in order to enjoy some sort of normalcy, Norrington discovered the distortions of time aboard the Dutchman.

“1683?”

“Oui. Pourquoi?”

“No reason.”

Language on the Dutchman was another thing. Everyone spoke their own languages, but could be understood in equal measure by everyone else.

The time situation, however, was something that Norrington did not think he could ever get used to.

“See George over there?” Bootstrap said, pointing to the crewman with the white eye patch one evening.

“Yes?”

“He’s from 1609. The one over there with the strange hair? He’s from 2007! And he wasn’t born a boy, either, but he says his doctors made him into one!” Bootstrap, obviously amazed that someone had become their gender without ever having been born to it, gave Norrington a bit more information that he had gleaned from the man with green hair about the twenty-first century.

“And everyone is from a different period of time?” he asked his dining companion.

“Yes! Will says it makes sense to the ship, so we shouldn’t be bothered by it. I need to ask David another question,” Bootstrap said as he got up from his bench and, with plate & cup in hand, went to the green-haired man.

He had known someone like David once, a boy called Pete who he had convinced to leave at the first port with forged transfer papers from Norrington himself before their superstitious captain found out. If doctors in the future year of 2007 could help David, it gave him hope that people like the young Pete would one day not have to hide themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was once considered bad luck for a "woman" to be onboard a ship.


	4. Almost, but not quite.

As crew members of the Dutchman left, and new ones were brought on, Norrington seemed to find himself watching the wrecks they came upon, searching for a face that he knew but didn’t know who it was supposed to be.

Bootstrap caught him one day.

“Have you figured it out yet? What your unfinished business is that threw you out of the Locker and onto the Dutchman?”

Norrington looked at the former pirate in confusion.

“Threw me? What are you talking about?”

“You literally fell from the heavens when you arrived! Just phwoom! Landed right there next to where Young Douglas is standing.” He nodded his head to a young red-headed man with a ring through his right eyebrow.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Well you wouldn’t. You were technically dead, after all. The dead don’t feel or have feelings.”

“Oh.”

Norrington thought around in his mind for a moment before turning back to Bootstrap.

“Do you know what my unfinished business is?”

“I have a feeling. You’re always looking for someone or something in the wrecks. Personally I think it’s a someone. Will says you made it your personal mission to capture Jack Sparrow.”

The former commodore was silent for a moment more.

“I think that I need to be there. To see him when he finally dies”

“But-?”

“But, a part of me doesn’t want him to die. Or maybe it just doesn’t want him to die by anyone’s hand but my own.”

Bootstrap patted him on the back.

“Then you’ll have a long wait. You don’t know Jack like I do. Hell, I know more about Jack Sparrow than even he does! Haha!”

Bootstrap turned and went up the stairs to take over piloting duties, leaving James Norrington feeling quite befuddled on the foredeck.


End file.
